


The Cat of Many Colors

by wilderswans



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Animal Death, Cats, Fluff, Found Family, Frumpkin is an Emotional Support Familiar, Gen, Jester shares my feelings about extremely fluffy cats, Nott eats dog though, Recreational Drug Use, Some angst, Spoilers for Episode 29, but it's okay because Frumpkin has a good sense of humor about dying, catnip trip, cats are Good, family forms around a cat, happy international cat day, literally fluff, mighty nein feelings, naked cats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 07:14:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15625497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wilderswans/pseuds/wilderswans
Summary: Cats are fickle, changeable creatures - fey cats even more so.Caleb learns to roll with it.(A fic about my fey cat headcanon, and also how families come together around cats. Happy International Cat Day~)





	The Cat of Many Colors

**Author's Note:**

> I ask you: Why would Frumpkin want to just look like the same cat, over and over again, every time Caleb casts Find Familiar after Frumpkin's been poofed out of existence by stray dogs or mean guards or Nott eating him? Hence my headcanon: Frumpkin looks like a different cat each time he comes back, baby!

Caleb is perplexed and not the least bit worried the first time it happens.

He’s been on-edge enough as it is - the shock of losing Frumpkin for the first time makes him wonder if perhaps he’s performed the ritual wrong. Even though he hasn’t had a familiar for very long, he’s come to rely on the fey cat he’d found as much as he relies on Nott, and when he’d heard the snarling of the stray dogs and Frumpkin’s pained yowling from behind him in the street two days ago his heart had been torn with the bitter pangs of grief as much as it would be if he had lost his best friend and traveling companion.

He’d been too late, of course, to stop the dogs. Frumpkin isn’t a very robust thing, and while logically he knows it is only a matter of spellwork to summon him again....

Well, spellwork and rather more money than he has in spell components.

They’re holed up in an abandoned house on the outskirts of an anonymous little town, and for the past hour Caleb has been focusing every ounce of his arcane ability on recalling Frumpkin. Upon hearing a demure little mew, he’d opened his eyes and.....

The cat staring back up at him, a foot away from the brazier pilfered from an accommodating junk shop, is not Frumpkin.

Caleb’s heart sinks.

This cat is - it is a good deal bigger than Frumpkin, and its brown tabby coat is broken up by large patches of white.

“Nott,” he calls hoarsely, throat tight. There are only two rooms in this little cabin that’s beginning to fall down, and seconds later she’s crossed into the room that Caleb’s sitting in.

“What is it?” she asks. She’s gnawing on something, and beneath the pervasive plumes of fragrant smoke from the brazier, Caleb can smell roasted meat. “Did you get your cat back?”

“Are you certain you got the right kind of charcoal?” Caleb asks, racking his brains for any sort of answer - any reason why his familiar wouldn't return, replaced instead by one that's new. “Or the incense -”

“I got exactly what you told me to get,” Nott says, and has the decency to not sound affronted. They’ve only been traveling together a short while, but already she is better to him than he deserves. She gnaws on one of her long, chipped fingernails in a musing sort of manner. “Does it count if the components are stolen? Can the spell tell?”

Caleb shakes his head, feeling despair wash over him.

He looks back at the cat, who looks placidly up at him. Its prim little paws are tipped in white, like wee socks, and if Caleb wasn’t so heartbroken and perplexed he’d want to gnash his teeth at how cute those paws are.

He looks at the eyes and -

There is something very familiar about them.

“Frumpkin?” he asks, then tries reaching out through their telepathic bond. In return he gets a rush of calm affection, the mental equivalent of Frumpkin headbutting his face.

“Mrrp?” the cat responds aloud, as if to say, _It is me, you paranoid garbage person_.

Immediately Caleb reaches to pick Frumpkin up and finds he has to exert much more energy to lift the cat. This new Frumpkin is easily double the size of the slender tabby he’d found on the side of the road, and while his patchy white tummy is soft and a bit flabby, beneath the sleek coat he can feel strong muscle.

“I missed you, _mein Freund_ ,” he says, cuddling the cat close and scritching his little cheeks. “I will take better care and make sure you are not savaged by dogs again, it is my fault, I am so sorry.”

He continues cooing much in this same vein for several minutes. Frumpkin purrs and the way he licks Caleb’s cheek, scratchy tongue rasping against weeks’ worth of stubble, makes Caleb’s heart feel light with affection and forgiveness.

He hears Nott’s light footsteps on the creaky floor next to him, and then her little hand is tugging at Caleb’s coat. He and Frumpkin look down to see her luminous lamplight eyes, wide and earnest, as she holds aloft a haunch of meat still steaming from the fire.

“I’m glad you got your cat back,” she says, looking between him and the new form of Frumpkin with a little confusion, but she takes it all in stride. She waves the meat at him. “Do the both of you want some dog? It’ll be like revenge if he eats the dog that ate him, I think.”

  
***

 

  
After that, Caleb likes to think he is a responsible wizard-slash-cat-owner, and endeavors to be more aware of any dangers that face his familiar, as well as him and Nott. He can’t, however, account for accidents.

“I’m sorry,” Nott says, wringing her knobbly-knuckled hands as Caleb lights the brazier. The familiar smell of incense and dried herbs washes over him, comforting if smothering. “I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry -”

Caleb waves a hand. “It is all right, Nott.”

“I killed him,” Nott faintly wails, as Caleb begins to wave the smoke from the brazier over himself. “I didn’t mean to, my foot slipped and then I was just falling and then - _squish_!”

Before he becomes too absorbed in his arcane focus, Caleb reaches out to take Nott’s hand. She blinks at him, and there are actually tears in her eyes.

They know each other well enough by now that Caleb suspects she thinks he’ll never speak to her again, that he’ll leave because of yesterday’s little accident. He squeezes her hand, not letting her gaze shift away.

“I put him there to break your fall,” he says. “I can summon Frumpkin again and get him back after he dies. I cannot do the same for you if you break your neck falling from a building.”

“Oh,” says Nott, very faintly. Then the tears in her eyes begin to well up further. “Th - thank you.”

“You are welcome,” Caleb says. He tries to smile - it has been some time since he has done so, so all he can really manage is a sort of crinkling around his eyes. But he thinks she understands, for she wipes her eyes with the ragged edge of her cloak and scurries back.

“I’ll let you focus now,” she says. “I can leave you alone, if you’d like.”

Caleb considers. It does require a great deal of focus, but Nott’s fidgeting, and he knows she won’t do anything horrible to break his concentration. “You can sit and watch,” he offers. “It might be boring.”

He closes his eyes as he hears the ruffle of clothing and gear, and begins to turn his mind inward, centering on his breathing. Somewhere in his own inner consciousness he finds the mental thread that ties him to Frumpkin, and begins to follow it through the mists of the arcane.

When Frumpkin returns this time, he is a cat again, and not an octopus. He is also a much different cat than he was the last two times. He is smaller again, and his coat has changed from the mottled brown stripes and patches to a striking cream, deepening to a rich dark brown along his tail and legs His eyes have changed, too, to a luminous blue, and they slowly blink at him. The pattern of brown fur on Frumpkin’s face and ears makes Caleb think of raccoons, and it makes Frumpkin look quizzical and perhaps a bit mischievous.

“Another new look?” he asks.

“Mrowr,” Frumpkin says, and grooms the fur of his tail for a moment before jumping into Caleb’s lap.

For a few moments Caleb pets him, murmuring apologies - first for turning him into an octopus in the first place, and then for having him squished under Nott. The response he gets along their mental link is a wry weariness, which makes Caleb feel slightly more at ease.

 _Nott is very sorry too, go give her a headbutt,_ he silently tells Frumpkin, who blinks slowly at him before jumping off of his lap.

Moments later he hears a strangled, “ _Augh_!” and turns to see Frumpkin’s paws on Nott’s shoulders, the cat licking her face while she squirms and giggles.

Oh, Caleb thinks. Maybe smiling isn’t as difficult as he thought it was.

  
***

 

After the celebration in Alfield dies down, Caleb retreats to the room he and Nott have been granted by the grateful citizens. He is tired. His body hurts, and his mind is beginning to flag in ways he knows from experience are Not Good, the ways that herald an impending Bad Day.

He is grimy from the gnoll mines, and the scent of smoke and ash won’t leave the inside of his nose, even hours later. He is reluctant to admit that he needs a bath, but before anything else he needs his cat.

The brazier, a little battered and worse for wear, emerges from his pack, alongside the incense and herbs. It takes some effort to crumble the charcoal into pieces small enough to fit into the brazier, his tired and aching hands not working the way he wants them to, but eventually he assembles the brazier and lights it, filling the room with fragrant smoke.

Weariness almost overtakes him as he sits in silence and focuses on recalling Frumpkin. His mind, moving molasses-slow, meanders off the guiding link between him and his familiar, and he finds it has been far longer than an hour when he opens his eyes, feeling Frumpkin’s presence once more in front of him.

Frumpkin is black this time. In the dim light of the room’s single lamp he can see tints of red to the fur along his sides and neck, and the cat’s coat is luxuriously long and thick, inviting Caleb to pet him. Perhaps Frumpkin could tell Caleb needed softness to cuddle.

“Hey, buddy,” Caleb sighs, leaning back. He calls him over mentally and Frumpkin immediately trots over, already purring like a little maniac.

Caleb picks him up and drapes him over his neck like a scarf, scritching his head and closing his eyes at the softness of his fur. In this incarnation Frumpkin is the softest he’s ever been, and Caleb is grateful beyond words when Frumpkin’s tail curls around to gently bap him on the nose a few times, as if petting him in return. The thick fur gives off a soft fragrance of lilacs and shimmering amber beneath the incense and herbs, and Caleb wonders if it’s the scent of the Feywild, or whichever in-between place Frumpkin spends his time before being recalled to Caleb’s side.

Either way, the scent of flowers and brightness takes over the lingering haze of smoke and burning that clings to the insides of Caleb’s nostrils, and Caleb breathes it in until they fall asleep.

 

  
***

 

“Oh, Frumpkin has changed!” Jester exclaims, when he heads downstairs for breakfast the next morning. Frumpkin is still draped around his shoulders, the tip of his tail twitching as he takes in the rest of the group gathered around a single long table. Jester leaps up and begins scritching Frumpkin’s chin, cooing.

“He is still so beautiful and handsome and noble, yes he is,” she croons. Frumpkin bathes in the affection, purring loudly, and it is for his sake that Caleb does not immediately step back - Jester is standing far too close, close enough that Caleb can smell what must be a very expensive perfume.

“He is so handsome no matter what he wears, he is the handsomest Lumpy in the entire world~” Jester continues, now ruffling Frumpkin’s fluffy cheeks with both of her hands. Frumpkin only purrs louder, and a wet patch is starting on Caleb’s shoulder where the cat is actually beginning to drool.

“Does your cat - always change like that?” Fjord asks, brow furrowed.

“Usually when he calls him back after Frumpkin dies,” Nott supplies, already swigging from a tankard that’s too big for her. “The first time it happened Caleb was very surprised.”

“Surprised wasn’t the beginning of it,” Caleb comments, remembering all too clearly how shocked he’d been the first time Frumpkin died and come back. It’s funny - at the time he’d been so filled with panic and despair that Frumpkin looked different, but now it’s nothing to be startled about.

The bright one - Mollymauk - is looking with faint amusement between Jester sending Frumpkin into throes of kitty ecstasy with scritches, and Caleb who probably looks as uncomfortable as he feels at Jester’s proximity. “I can understand wanting a new look after all that,” he says, and even though his tone is light Caleb gets the distinct feeling that there’s something deeply nuanced about that comment.

It is none of his business, he decides, and unwinds a pliant Frumpkin from around his neck for Jester to hold while he fetches his breakfast.

  
***

  
Funnily enough, the longer Caleb and Frumpkin spend with the rest of the Mighty Nein, the more they seem to view Frumpkin’s periodic changes in appearance as less of a curiosity and more like something endearing - even something to look forward to. It doesn’t negate the loss Caleb feels every time Frumpkin ends up disappearing, but it does make the loss a little more tolerable until he can pick up more charcoal and incense.

In Zadash, after that horrible guard had kicked Frumpkin into nonexistence, Jester and Mollymauk and Beau had trailed behind Caleb in the Invulnerable Vagrant, whispering between themselves and musing on what form Frumpkin would take once Caleb had cast Find Familiar.

“Orange tabby,” Beau says confidently, arms crossed as they watch Caleb dither in front of glass jars of dusty herbs. “Orange tabby is the way to go.”

“What if he gets really fluffy,” Jester wonders. She sighs wistfully. “Like, _really_ fluffy, because I know last time he was fluffy. Like, what if he was _so fluffy_ and he had a little pink nose and big paws with fluff between his toes-” Unless Caleb is very much mistaken, her voice is actually getting thick with tears. “And - and what if his tail was _just like_ a fluffy feather boa - !!”

Beau scoffs, apparently immune to the overwhelming cuteness of fluffy cats that’s currently crippling Jester. “No way, cats that foofy? Useless on the road. Caleb would be wasting his time picking brambles and foxtails and shit out of his fur. Short hair all the way.”

“I wonder,” Molly muses, “would the size the cat comes back as make him more robust?”

“You’re full of shit,” Beau says. “Then he’d just come back as a bobcat or something and nothing else would be able to kill him.”

“There’s an idea,” Molly says brightly. “Caleb, can you see if your cat can come back as a bobcat?”

“I do not think he takes requests,” Caleb says, scooping a bit of dried lavender into a little paper bag.

All three of them - and Fjord, who Caleb suspects is merely curious in an academic sort of way - camp out in the hallway outside of Caleb and Nott’s room before he begins the ritual to call back Frumpkin.

“We really really want to see what he looks like,” Jester says earnestly.

“That, and we have a bet,” Molly adds, gesturing between him and Beau, whose lips quirk in a cocky sort of smile.

“I’m just sayin, if it’s not an orange tabby I question his taste as a self-respecting cat.”

Fjord merely gives Caleb a look that borders on deeply despairing, as if to say _I don’t have a horse in this race but I’m curious against my better judgment_.

“...Just don’t make too much noise out here,” Caleb says at last, looking between them. Jester claps her hands to her mouth and nods.

“You won’t even know we’re here,” Molly says amiably, leaning against the wall.

An hour passes, and Caleb - against his own better judgment - fans the burning coals in the brazier to cause smoke to billow theatrically before he opens the door and mentally directs Frumpkin to trot into the hall. He hangs back in the room, but close enough to the door that he can hear the collective intake of breath.

Then Jester screams loud enough to shake the rafters. “ _HE’S SO FLUFFY_!” A moment later she bursts into tears, completely overcome.

“Aw, shit, he’s big,” Beau says, something akin to wonder in her voice.

“Ah, shit, he’s _orange_ ,” Molly grouses, in the tone of someone who is neither winning or losing a bet.

The next time Caleb sees the guard stationed at the gates of the Tri-Spire district, it is a bit of a struggle to lift Frumpkin and hold him - in this form Frumpkin is, after all, tall enough to look Nott in the eye if he stands on his hind legs and put his paws on her shoulders, and extremely hefty to boot - but it’s worth it to see the bastard who’d kicked Frumpkin swallow at the glare both the wizard and the massive ginger Forest Cat give him.

  
***

  
“Oh no,” Caleb overhears Nott say as he comes downstairs to the tavern. She wraps her little hands around the oversized tankard and takes a hearty swig of ale, doctored with a healthy pour from her flask.

“What’s wrong?” Jester asks. “Is there a fly in your drink? I thought there were a lot of flies around, we should see if we can totally guilt them into giving us free drinks, if there is.”

“Aw, Frumpkin, really?” Beau says, sounding a little disgusted, having followed Nott’s gaze. Jester spins around in her chair to look, and her eyes immediately widen.

Caleb is holding Frumpkin close to his chest, wrapped in his coat.

“He gets cold like this,” Caleb supplies, but Frumpkin starts to wriggle and Caleb has no choice but to let him go, letting him jump from his arms onto the bench.

There’s a beat of silence as the Nein take in the cat sitting on the bench next to Jester, happily headbutting against her arm. This time, Frumpkin’s elected to come back entirely hairless, and now he looks very fleshy and pink and a bit wrinkly as he plays with the loose laces on Jester’s dress.

“Commando is a good look,” Molly comments. “Very breezy and low-maintenance.” Beau groans around her mouthful of bacon.

“He looks like a wrinkled ballsack,” she says, rolling her eyes in disgust. “These cats are fucking weird.”

“I _like_ him!” Jester says staunchly, stroking the soft skin of Frumpkin's side. “He is still the handsomest cat!”

“Handsome is subjective.” Fjord shrugs, picking up one of the slabs of toast on the side of his plate and smearing it with a lumpy sort of jam from a communal jar on the table.

“Handsome is as handsome does,” Molly says sagely, wiggling his fingers at Fjord and smirking.

“I think we should get him a little sweater, and little mittens, so he won’t get cold like this,” Jester says. “And a little scarf, so he’ll match Caleb.”

“Cats can’t walk in mittens,” Fjord points out. Beau shakes her head.

“Caleb,” she calls to the wizard, currently ordering his breakfast. “Can’t you dismiss him and summon him again into something better-looking?”

Caleb doesn’t respond, but sends Frumpkin a mental nudge as he waits for his plate of food. The cat leaps from the bench onto the table and walks down the length of it, between plates and tankards until he reaches Beau.

Then he plops himself right in front of Beau’s plate and begins to noisily lick his own ass.

Beau erupts at the same time that Jester, Molly, and Fjord dissove into helpless laughter; Caleb’s composure almost cracks when she screeches, “ _Caleb!_ You’re making him do that on purpose, you and your naked cat are _fuckin gross_!”

Naked Frumpkin continues to groom himself demurely, as if none of them exist. The insides of Caleb’s cheeks hurt; he’s had to bite them to keep from smiling as Molly actually begins to wipe tears of mirth from his eyes.

“I love this cat,” he declares dramatically. “This cat _understands_ me.”

“Fuck you, Molly,” Beau glowers, and adds, “and your naked cat too.”

Frumpkin unbends himself long enough to fix Beau with a wrinkly stare. She huffs and abandons the table, swiping the last few pieces of bacon on her plate and stalking off to the bar. Caleb scoots her plate forward and takes her spot next to Fjord, beginning to tuck into breakfast as Jester attempts to lure Frumpkin over with a scrap of scrambled egg.

“What is wrong, Nott?” Jester asks, once Frumpkin is settled in her lap. She’s rubbing his ears between her fingers to warm them, and Frumpkin’s eyes are closed in satisfaction.

“I don’t like it when he looks like this either,” Nott says, sounding sad.

“Why not? He’s fine, Beau is just being a close-minded poophead,” Jester says.

Nott sighs, tipping her mask down so she can inhale another rasher of bacon. “The last time he looked like this, I ate him,” she says. “Every time I see him now I’m gonna be hungry. He looks like a raw chicken just walking around like this.”

  
***

  
Weeks pass and the weather grows colder, and the next time Frumpkin picks a new form he opts for one that needs less in the way of tiny knit clothing (which Jester insisted on purchasing, and which she stores folded up neatly in her bottomless haversack). The next time Caleb has to cast _Find Familiar_ , after an hour Frumpkin is standing there, looking up at him with amber eyes so wide he wears an expression of constant surprise. His fur’s gone mottled black and orange, with a wide patch of ginger that covers his entire chin. He’s gotten wider, and much smaller.

The effect is, rather charmingly, like a little pumpkin perched on tiny sticks for legs.

“You are much more portable like this,” Caleb comments, picking Frumpkin up and ruffling the soft fur of his belly. He wonders if the cat changes appearance because he likes trying new textures of fur to have pet. Frumpkin sends him a mental purr, and leaps off of his lap to go sniff at some interesting leaves in the clearing they’ve made camp in.

Twenty-four hours later he’s casting _Find Familiar_ again and mentally wincing at how much this damn spell is adding up to be.

“Sorry,” Fjord rumbles, looking really sheepish as Caleb shakes the last of the jar of herbs into the brazier, trying to get every last dusty bit out. “It was dark, and he was mostly black, and -”

“My cat and I don’t mind that you tripped over him on your way to the toilet,” Caleb says, “but I do mind that we’re three days out from any town and I’m officially out of the ritual components.”

“How do you kill a cat by tripping over them?” Molly asks, from where he’s observing a few feet away.

“Got big feet,” Fjord mumbles, face flushing dark green. “Sorry, Caleb. I’ll buy you some more components when we hit another town.”

“ _Danke, danke_ ,” Caleb says, mind already half into the spell, and lights the brazier.

An hour later, when the smoke has cleared and Frumpkin is standing next to Caleb, Molly chuckles at the form Frumpkin has chosen to take this time - long and lanky, sleek of fur so white it’s almost blinding. He blinks slowly at Fjord.

“Bet you’ll see him now,” Molly comments, leaning forward to give Frumpkin’s pointy chin a little tickle.

“Thanks, little guy,” Fjord says, patting Frumpkin but still looking a little guilty.

  
***

  
And it goes on like this, the longer they travel. Occasionally needs dictate that Frumpkin take on his sparrow or owl guises; but Caleb always feels a mental wave of relief every time Frumpkin is returned to his favorite feline forms.

One night Caleb searches for Frumpkin before bed, walking all over camp and wondering if perhaps his familiar has gotten distracted by mice before he realizes, passing by Yasha’s bedroll for the third time, that Frumpkin is curled up against Yasha’s back, a sleepy sphere of black and white that’s blended in with her braided hair.

Another day, Caleb and Beau are stretched out in the back of the wagon as the horses plod on under a wide blue sky. Caleb drags his attention away from his book long enough to notice that Beau’s holding Frumpkin - currently an orange tabby - like a baby, face pressed close to the cat’s while she massages his chest and scratches his little kitty armpits. She freezes when she notices Caleb watching, and abruptly clears her throat. “Don’t judge me, orange cats are the best,” she says, maybe a bit defensively. ‘He, uh. Right now he looks kinda like the cat I had growing up, so...”

When they hit the next town large enough to have an apothecary, Molly returns to their inn from what Caleb suspects is an illicit drug-finding trip, barges into Caleb and Nott’s room as if he owns it, and tosses a cloth bundle on the bed where the cat is currently sprawled, this time a tri-colored, lanky thing with a little nub of a tail that makes him look more rabbit than cat. Frumpkin immediately starts sniffing the bundle, and Caleb begins to Worry.  
“One for you and one for me, little friend,” Molly says grandly, pulling his own bundle of whatever-the-hells he’s purchased illegally out from his coat pocket. Caleb tears the smaller bundle away from Frumpkin long enough to recognize the smell of catmint, and tosses it back to Frumpkin to do with as he will.  
Molly and Beau end up staying in Caleb’s room for three hours, stoned out of their minds and giggling helplessly at Frumpkin’s catmint-fueled antics. Caleb can’t admit that his familiar’s catmint high travels along their telepathic link, close enough to a contact high that he has to remain planted in his chair or he’ll end up lying on the ground in a puddle while Frumpkin bats at the chains and charms dangling from Molly’s horns.

The morning they find that Jester, Yasha, and Fjord have disappeared, Frumpkin is an understated gray with extremely plush fur. Caleb can’t see him through the thick mist that’s settled over the camp and wants to call out for him, wants to shout out of the ridiculous fear that Frumpkin will disappear too. It only takes a moment before Frumpkin comes trotting back to him, winding around his ankles to comfort, and when he purrs it’s as if he’s saying _I’m here, I won’t leave._

They’ve lost their friends, but Caleb still has Frumpkin.

They’ve lost Molly, but Frumpkin - now an owl, now a spider - remains.

“You shouldn’t have killed my cat,” Caleb says, staving off the rising panic as Lorenzo smolders before him, monstrous form burning into nothing, disintigrating into so much ash and soot. But that’s not quite right, is it?

He can’t bring himself to say _You shouldn’t have come after the people who love my cat._ The words _My cat loves these people, and that means I love them too_ are left unspoken and taste bitter with truth on his tongue.

  
***

  
After the Sour Nest, after their next meeting with Ophelia Mardune, Caleb finally gets to cast _Find Familiar_ in their room at the Landlocked Lady. He places the lozenges of charcoal in the brazier, places the drops of resinous incense atop them and sprinkles the herbs over the whole lot.

Leaving the Sour Nest he’d been tempted to sweep some of Lorenzo’s ashes into his pocket, utilize that bastard’s remains in bringing his cat back. But instead he pulls out the pouch of catmint that Molly had bought for Frumpkin weeks ago, and places a few hefty pinches of it in with the other herbs.

He lights it, and closes his eyes. He breathes in the scent of incense and burning herbs, familiar as ever, and focuses on following that telepathic tether between planes that connects him to his familiar.

It might be the trials of the day, or the words that died in his throat back at the Sour Nest, but his concentration is fractured. He can’t stop thinking about Fjord and Jester and Yasha, still sleeping under the weight of their wounds. He thinks of Molly, chest in tatters and shirt drenched in his own blood. He thinks of how lost Keg looked when they discovered her friend wasn’t in the cells in that horrible dungeon, and the sheer desperation of Nila as she bent steel with her bare hands to free her family.

He doesn’t know how long he sits and cries, the spell completely lost in the wake of how overwhelmed and scared he feels. On some level he’s aware of the incense burning out, the charcoal growing cold in the brazier, but he can't bring himself to do anything but sniffle as the smoke peters out.

“ _Scheisse_ ,” he mutters, cursing himself for a fool. That’s ten gold wasted, and it’s too late to go out and try to buy more components.

He wipes his eyes and looks up.

“Mrowr?” Frumpkin chirps.

It’s the Frumpkin Caleb hasn’t seen in - quite some time. He looks exactly how he did when Caleb found him on the side of the road; he looks like Caleb’s own childhood cat. For some reason this causes the tears to well up in his eyes again, and when he opens his arms Frumpkin trots right in.

“I’m sorry,” Caleb mumbles against Frumpkin’s sleek fur, but he doesn’t know who he’s apologizing to.

Frumpkin beams back pure love through their telepathic link, and Caleb buries his face in Frumpkin’s fur and weeps.

 _Love_ , Frumpkin repeats, but stronger this time.

It’s not the same as having a conversation with someone. Frumpkin relays information in images and broad concepts, and right now he’s sending Caleb memories, every moment with the rest of the Nein, every little kiss Jester planted on Frumpkin's forehead and the image of Molly and Fjord cackling at the breakfast table while Frumpkin licked his own arse in front of Beau, the mighty feeling of being perched tall on Yasha’s shoulder and the memory of Nott and Frumpkin blinking slowly back and forth at each other with matching lamplight eyes.

 _Love_ , Frumpkin thinks along their bond. Something about the simplicity of the feeling - love from a cat's heart, pure and simple - makes him think that perhaps everything will be all right.

“I know, my friend,” Caleb says, leaning his forehead against Frumpkin’s little head. “I love them too.”

**Author's Note:**

> A few cameos from cats I have known and loved: 
> 
> Big brown tabby Frumpkin (with the soft belly!) is based off of my roommate's cat, Beau (unrelated to Beauregard).  
> Seal point Siamese Frumpkin based off of my girlfriend's cat, Ninja.  
> Fluffy black Frumpkin based off my own cat Fenris, who stuck close while I was writing for encouraging purrs.  
> Black and orange Frumpkin (that Fjord trips over) based off of my friend's cat, Bambi.  
> Black and white Frumpkin snuggling with Yasha based off of another friend's cat, Lola.  
> Orange tabby Frumpkin based off of my own childhood cats.


End file.
